Wardell POMEROY

Biography

He was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He graduated from Indiana University (BA, 1935; MA, 1942) and earned a Ph.D. in psychology in 1954 from Columbia University. While working as a psychologist in an Indiana state hospital, he met Kinsey and came to work on his seminal sex-research project. Pomeroy personally recorded approximately 6,000 sexual histories. He was co-author with Kinsey on the landmark books Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953). He went into the private practice of sex therapy in New York City in 1963 and wrote books about adolescent sexuality for popular consumption. In 1976, he became dean of the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality and an adjunct professor at California Medical School and California State University at Northridge. Pomeroy retired due to declining health in 1983 and died in Bloomington, Indiana of Lewy body dementia. He was portrayed in the 2004 theatrical film Kinsey by Chris O'Donnell.